ISPCON ’99: Everyone boasts Linux

The following was contributed by Linux Today reader Robert Dale.

Last week at ISPCON, a conference for ISPs, in Baltimore, it
seemed everyone was showing off their Linux boxen, including the
heavy-weights. Not only was some of the hardware impressive, but
some of the stories as well.

Here’s the scoop as I visited them…

IBM

• RS/6000 F50: Quad G3 @ 332MHz, 768MB RAM running Redhat 5.x and
  kernel 2.2.5
• Netfinity 5000: dual P2 running TurboLinux
• Got word on IBM’s real stance on shipping with Linux: The
  desktops for now will ship with PC DOS 7.0 (because they have to
  ship with an OS to test with) and it will be at no extra charge. As
  for the laptops, it’s a little more difficult. Don’t expect
  anything anytime soon. In the meantime, they are evaluating
  distributions.
• And for shits & giggles, one of the IBM/Linux guys had an
  IBM PowerPC laptop w/built-in camera running AIX

Intel

• Dell PowerEdge: sorry, didn’t get the specs
• Real Networks demo: Home-made machine with quad P3, 1GB RAM
  running RH5.1 and RealServer. Serving up to G2 players on Windows
  98

Ariel

• These guys make a RAS board and also pre-built RAS boxes 100%
  Linux.

Sendmail

• Eric Allman was there for a couple of days

VA
Research

• VarServer 3500: Quad P3 @ 500MHz
• VarServer 4500: Quad P3 Xeon @ 400MHz
• Rasterman dropped by and configured E.

EIS
Computers

• Fusion ix2: dual UltraSPARC2 @ 360MHz
• A quad UltraSPARC2 is on loan from Dave Miller. They tell me
  Dave left Cobalt Micro on a bet from Sun that he couldn’t make
  Linux run faster than Solaris. Dave will get his machine back after
  the show 😉
• EIS is making their own distribution called UltraLinux. They
  will be the first company to fully support Linux on the
  UltraSPARC.

Aironet

• Makers of wireless networking equipment, had PCMCIA cards and
  they boasted best performance with Linux drivers.
• Drivers freely available at:
  csb.stanford.edu/pub/pcmcia/contrib/airo-cs.tar.gz

Compaq

• Multiple Digital ALPHA Servers running RH 5.3, RH 6.0, and
  Tru64. Rasterman dropped by to show them how to use E.
• Answers for Linux page: www.compaq.com/activeanswers Howto
  install diff. flavors of Linux, apache config info. Create a free
  account to access.

Alteon

• The makers of ACEnic gigabit adapters. Support in Linux.

HAL Computers
(division of Fujitsu)

• They helped Donald Becker write NIC drivers for their Beowulf
  clusters.
• They told me they just did a large (forgot to ask how big)
  Beowulf cluster for a health organization to do chemical
  modelling.

Sun had a HUGE setup, but no Linux boxen. I would like to extend
thanks to VA Research for letting me hang out at their booth to
write this up and check my email during that week, oh, and for tons
of Tux stickers. 😉